By Matt Russell
The sun was on its way, blazing a trail down the horizon. It had seen enough of this part of the world for one day. It glistened on the gentle orange platform, slowly painting blue, then black. I watched from my window while the stars emerged into thousands of dot-to-dot designs, signaling their eager fans to sit back in their raggedy lawn chairs, binoculars in hand and cooler at the side, awaiting the meteor shower.Trees and fences hindered the Old, but the Young had a better way. For those not entrenched in the protective claws of the Old, a sort of anticline stood at the edge of town, barrier to the west. It extended one hundred and fourteen feet high and a couple miles trending north to south. On the west side, not ten feet from the edge ran a railroad track, parallel, and a couple desert miles before hitting the ocean.
Parents never wanted their impressionable adolescents journeying out there in these early foundation-forming days of life. The Losers had their home there...That is, the Young who didn't want to grow Old. The rationale seemed to make sense too, as all the Young wanted to be Losers, and all the Old wanted to wipe the Losers out of existence so that everyone could grow to be Old, so the Old wouldn’t become extinct.
Still, becoming a Loser was not for everyone. Those who never made the Train Dodge Pledge or even came to the hill were bound to grow Old. Those who had never even seen the other side of the hill would suffer the worst fate of all -- growing Old gracefully.
So Lad and I knew we had to go up there tonight to watch the meteor shower. Mother never dared anything but dread or deny my eventual assent, but the sentiments only intensified tonight because tonight was special; every night there was a meteor shower, there was also a train dodge. Even the dodge itself had a special quality to it. One did not just stand on the track until fear overtook him; rather, he stood at the top of the hill until the train got close, a mere fifty yards away. Then he would jet foreword with all strength and courage packed in his engine for one brisk charge down the hill and leap across the track. The closer to the train, the more successful the runner's said to be.
Through the years, a small number of radical right wing revolutionaries had tried to put a stop to the train dodging by posting fences at the foot of the hill, but they were always uprooted and replaced around the homes of the fanatics who failed to acknowledge that nobody had ever gotten hurt in a train dodge, save some minor posterior scrapings. My mother was a revolutionary who forbade me to go to the hill; hence, I merely announced that I'd be watching the meteors at Lad's, and she trusted me. My father, however, knew the thrill of the hill. A secret he'd always kept from my mother but not me was how he ventured up one day just to see what it was like. So he knew I'd go myself if for no other motivation than the impression of Lad. "Just be careful," he pleaded. "Don't dodge the train, no matter what they say!"
Everything was fabulous that night--dinner, the TV show I watched, the exercise to head-banging music. I took a long shower while pretending to be someplace else and with one of the female guest stars of the afore-mentioned TV show. I kissed my mom goodbye and flew out the door, forsaking my jacket. Feeling alive for once made me a tad self-conscious, but I realized I didn’t care. The neighborhood stared at my expression of excitement, and I was glad. Lad, too, had nothing to say, but only a look in his eyes, a picture to last for all lifetime, the celebration of liberation. We hardly heard his mother's calls to remember a jacket before heading to my house to see the show. Just the street, the hill, the twilight in the night...these were the robbers of attention, not that they really stole; we gave it away. Then the thrill built up to its highest peak at the end of the road which bordered the field which bordered the hill. Then could be seen others, and when their eyes met ours, we knew we had arrived.
Breathing deep, surveying the area, taking in you're one of us vibes, climbing with only gradual exuberance until our eyes stood parallel to the top where the ocean was beheld and deliverance was at hand...Lad and I never felt more free for ourselves as this evening. When we still saw a sliver of orange sunset and our parents couldn't; when the wind carried cool ocean air, accented with warm desert sediment; when the faces of the Own Lives looked into ours and tried to pry something out, to wrinkle, to distort, to mold into sculptures that could ideally adorn the halls of their private gallery...That's when we could feel our Own Lives.
This recent arousal, though somewhat hard to explain, had a real energy to it, making me long to jump and scream, but I refused myself the satisfaction...until someone else acted on that same urge. Then I started, and before too long, everyone on the hill was screaming his and her lungs out. Somehow, though, I got noticed by the head of the Losers--or, pardon me, the Own Lives--because he turned away from his wild friends and cast a gaze at me. When he spoke, all other voices became suddenly quiet. “What have we here?,” said the brave leader, who seemed to possess an enormous amount of power for such a little waif. “Haven’t seen you two around,” he continued in the paradoxical childlike, but sinister voice of his. I started to say my name and introduce myself, but he cut me off with “Who the fuck cares anyway?” Then he sat down. To my surprise, Lad sat next to him.
The little thug turned to Lad. “So you little sprite,” he said. “I bet you like jumping, twirling, twisting, breaking bones, making an ass of yourself. I don’t mean to sound... insulting...” Judging from the look on Lad’s face, he was not insulted. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?” the fearless leader said. “You want to let loose, right?”
“Yeah,” Lad said, rather lustfully.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I could see where this was going. “You know, little guy...You’re gonna have so much fun tonight, you’re just gonna explode!” On “explode”, he shot back up on his feet, and a wave of laughter shot through the crowd like the stink of a smoke bomb.
I heard a raspy voice say, “There’s the whistle!”
“Yes,” said the Own Life, who seemed to be Lad’s new best friend. “It’s time for Skippy here to take the plunge.”
“What does that mean?” I blurted out, hating how adult and conversely naive I must have sounded.
“It’s the Pledge.”
“Lad, no...”
But he was locked in, hypnotized by the fire in the Loser’s eyes, to join the crowd, to dive into the melting pot of personal freedom that surrounded us. The ones that mattered, the ones held up for their fine modern art, the ones with the flashy rags, the ones with the most energy to jump the highest, the ones with the audacity to travel the farthest beyond lines of reason or even intelligence, the ones driven by raw emotion, alive for the thrill of stretching out like a rubber band until a break seems eminent, then letting go: these are the ones that matter, and their stare is into my eyes, and their hands are on my shoulders; I am, for one fleeting moment, the object of their fascination...
Lad stood up. I took a step forward to try and stop him, but instead I stopped myself, realizing there was no point. They had him. I had lost him.
The train stormed forward, but still out of our view. Its whistle howled in dread of this game that it didn’t like. The train moved at an incredible speed.
Lad assumed the running position. His squinting and tightly compressed face showed no lack of confidence.
“Why doesn’t the train stop?” I asked. “They must know you do this.”
“The driver is on our side,” said the Loser. “The adventurous type.”
A hundred yards from where we stood, the pounding of the engine pierced the air with its screaming whistle, tormenting the ears. Its andesite volcano smoke erupted straight at us, and it came closer and closer, and louder.
Then a noise even louder than the train ripped through the air, a throat-cutting shriek: “Now!” somebody yelled. “You must go now!”
A second passed as Lad took a breath.
“NO!” screamed the voice. “YOU CAN’T HESITATE! GO NOW OR--”
Lad charged forward down the hill, almost tripping on a small protruding rock. For the first instant, sighs of relief overshadowed the noise coming from the train as Lad got off to a good start. But as he arrived at the halfway point between us and the tracks, every one of us watching had a disturbing realization that his speed was not quite good enough. His flight forward, however, set him off at a speed for which sudden stops meant great challenge and injury. I tried to call out, but again decided it was pointless. After all, to be a Loser, you had to win the train dodge. Five feet from the hill’s end and ten feet from the head of the train, Lad sprang into the air. The next moment was filled with a muffled battering sound, as squirts of blood shot three feet outward in every direction. His body flew forward in the air a few feet before hitting the tracks in front of the engine. As my eye lids closed, attempting to smother my sockets permanently, my still-exposed ears heard the crack of bones being pulverized. I fell to the ground, momentarily losing consciousness.
When I awoke, my head was pounding; the train was still barreling along. The crowd gathered at the foot of the hill, close enough that the train blew their hair as it breezed passed them. I pushed them aside, and the first thing I noticed was an open rib cage with an arm leaning against it, almost covering the heart that was still trying to get out a few more beats. The group was starting to stomp on the remains. Someone had his head in her lap and was scooping out yellow pieces of his brain from the inside of the cracked skull. I swiftly knelt down and began picking Lad up, piece by piece.
“Bummer dude”, I heard a voice say.
I couldn’t breathe. I bolted towards the top of the hill. Once there, I knew I shouldn’t look back, but something compelled me to do so. The train continued on by, its endless parade of cars rolling past Lad, without remorse or regret. I was approached by the head Own Life, who wore a blank look on his face. He stared hard into my eyes. Then mouthing a kiss, he took his hand and gave me a firm push, sending me rolling at what might have been nearly a hundred miles an hour, down the side of the hill, my side of the hill, where home was and that sacred thing called safety which Lad and I had chosen the wrong night to leave behind. I tried to yell, but got a mouth full of dirt. A twig dug into my arm. One of my legs scraped against a jagged rock. My head kept twisting out of any normal position. My shirt started ripping apart. I felt blood oozing from my legs, just as it was oozing from one of Lad’s legs that I tried desperately to keep hold of in my arms. On down I went, and when I reached the bottom, my eyes closed, and I thought it might be for good.
Then I heard a sound above me, the sound of a middle aged man clearing his throat. I opened my eyes to a different world, though my heart and head were still pounding like the train’s engine. Standing at my feet was Dad, cooler in one hand, newspaper in the other. “Carry these home,” he said.
As I got up I realized that I had suddenly grown up. But there was nothing graceful about it.
©1998 Matt Russell